Tikvah
Editors’ Pick

August 25, 2023

No, the U.S. Didn’t Overthrow a Democratic Government in Persia

The myth of Mosaddeq.

Seventy years ago last Saturday, a popular uprising drove the Iranian prime minister Mohammad Mosaddeq out of office—four days after he had legally been dismissed from his position by the shah. In the West, the event has been remembered as an anti-democratic coup orchestrated by the CIA (whose station chief, Kermit Roosevelt, was all-too-eager to exaggerate his role) to subvert democracy in Persia. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright went so far as to apologize for U.S. involvement in 2000. Shay Khatiri set the record straight in a 2020 essay:

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